Customer Rating: 
Summary: Gould's "Goldberg Variations"
Comment: Glenn Gould plays the music beatifully on both recordings. He plays more slowly and smoothly in the 1981 recording than in the 1955 recording. The 1955 recording is really exciting and the 1981 recording is so elegant. The 1955 recording is dramatic and so fast that it lasts for half an hour. The 1981 recording is extremely slow that it last for an hour.
Customer Rating:
Summary: That nut's a genius!
Comment: Vladimir Horowitz is reported to have said, on seeing Gould in concert, "That nut's a genius!" nicely capturing his eccentricity as well as his talent. I'm no expert, but what I love about Gould is that he makes the music intelligible. Listening to other pianists play Bach often just sounds, to me at least, like people twiddling their fingers up and down the keyboard playing complicated scales. Gould's phrasing has the quality of language. The interesting aspect of this collection is how he disagrees with the earlier recording - or the earlier version of himself that made that recording. Both are astonishing and luminous. The bonus disc interview is illuminating if you ignore the excruciating "skits" Gould performs for it. That he died a few weeks after the 1981 recording was released gives it an added profundity, as an artist's last testament, but also a nice sense of completeness: first and last recording in dialogue, dispute and harmony.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Listened 1,000 times....
Comment: Glenn Gould was raised by his aunt who once, when asked if he had been a naughty child how she had punished him replied, "Glenn was a good little boy, but if I ever needed to correct his behaviour on anything all I had to do was threaten to not let him play the piano..."Gould may not have played the 'purest' Bach, but he has certainly discovered the sweet narrative in 'Goldberg Variations'. Comparing this to his earlier recording we now find a self-referential quality that is far more profound and assured. This is a piece that is not just played but 'told', it expresses his life, Bach's life and everyman's life.
Customer Rating:
Summary: priceless
Comment: The first reviewer is mixed up about about the 1981 recordings. The disc we came to know as Gould's remake of the Goldbergs was recorded in digital AND as a backup, in analogue. What we have in this release is a newly remixed account taken from the analogue backup tapes presumably using the same takes as the digital CBC Album (released Autumn 1982 just before his death). So the new release of the 1981 sessions is the same as the old DDD release except different master tapes were used.
The set is worth it for the priceless interview and out-takes with Gould improvising a quodlibet on God Save the Queen & God Bless America.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A fusing of musical souls
Comment: Whether you fell in love with Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations years ago or have yet to discover them, this new Sony 3-disc digipack set is an absolute treat. It’s all here. First, the 1955 recording (38’ 26”) superbly remastered. As Tim Page says in his direct, illuminative introductory notes , “Gould’s Bach swung like made. It was urgent, vibrant, strutting and downright sexy.” Next, the 1981 analogue re-recording (at 51’ 14” significantly slower, differently expressed and incorporating selected repeats). This compares favourably with the digital version released in 1982, days before Gould’s tragically early death. It is sonically fuller, though the ambience seems to temper the characteristic ‘attack’ of his playing.
Then there is a third CD including some 1955 studio outtakes (released for the first time) and an extensive Page interview with Gould himself.
As if this wasn’t enough, the booklet sealed into the front of the attractive fold-out package includes a survey of Gould in the studio, the original liner notes he wrote for the 1955 recording, an excerpt from the score he annoted in 1981, and technical comments on these 16-bit 44.1KHz discs, including the digital-to-analogue issues on the 1981 set.
One note of caution, however. The omission of any direct mention of J. S. Bach on the front cover of this set, and in my review so far, is not without significance. For although these renditions are firmly rooted in the master’s aria and variations of BMV 988, they truly are (simultaneously) Glenn Gould from start to finish. He took what had once been regarded as beautiful but rather dryly academic harpsichord exercises and transformed them into a pianoforte tour-de-force that combined a deeply committed reading of the score with an unashamedly modern, post-Romantic sensibility.
Where does Gould begin and Bach end? Weave your way through all the raging arguments about authenticity in performance if you will - it is still pretty difficult to tell. Any yet it is also very clear. Whereas some of the myriad piano versions of Goldberg undeniably mire Bach in sentiment and floridity, Gould does neither. There is fire and passion here, certainly. But also restraint and attention. For musicologists it isn’t difficult to quarrel over points of interpretation, the faith(less)ness of particular modes of repetition, and so on. But somehow, and without warrant in the technical debates, one gains a sense of Gould fusing his soul with Bach’s through the medium of music. It is the feeling in these performances that is so undeniable.
If the great Johann Sebastian returned today I’m sure he would have some difficulty identifying Gould’s renditions in anything like the terms he put together the originals (inaccessible as those remain for us today). But I suspect he would still love what he heard and recognise his score as having been filtered lovingly through the hands of another, quite different master.
For less than the cost of many single discs these days, here is a real treasure.
